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Monday, July 10, 2017

DiEM25: "All Men Will Become Brothers!"

Extraordinary developments are taking place at DiEM25, Yanis Varoufakis' Democracy in Europe Movement 2025: a writer, media theorist and media activist by the name of Franco Berardi informed Varoufakis by letter that he would resign from DiEM25's Advisory Panel and Varoufakis answered that DiEM25 would not accept his resignation. The final outcome of this battle is not yet known.

Berardi's letter of resignation is quite extraordinary and I reproduce it below:

Dear Yanis, dear friends and comrades of the Democracy in Europe Movement 25,After the shameful decisions of the Paris meeting of Minniti Collomb de Maziere it’s time to understand that there is something flawed in our project of re-establishing democracy in Europe: this possibility does not exist.Democratic Europe is an oxymoron, as Europe is the heart of financial dictatorship in the world. Peaceful Europe is an oxymoron, as Europe is the core of war, racism and aggressiveness. We have trusted that Europe could overcome its history of violence, but now it’s time to acknowledge the truth:Europe is nothing but nationalism, colonialism, capitalism and fascism.During the Second World War not many protested against deportation, segregation, torture and extermination of Jews, Roma, communist militants and homosexuals. People had no information about the extermination.Now we are daily acquainted about what is happening all around the Mediterranean basin, we know how deadly is the effect of the European neglect and of the refusal to take responsibility for the migration wave that is a direct result of the wars provoked by two centuries of colonialism.The Archipelago of Infamy is spreading all around the Mediterranean Sea.Europeans are building concentration camps on their own territory, and they pay their Gauleiter of Turkey, Libya, Egypt and Israeli to do the dirty job on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where salted water has replaced ZyklonB.To stop the migratory Euro-Nazism is going to build enormous extermination camps. The non-governmental organisations guilty of rescuing people from the sea will be contained, downsized, criminalised, repressed.The externalisation of the European borders means extermination.Extermination is the word that defines the historical mission of Europe.Nazism is the only political form that corresponds to the soul of the European people.In the last twenty-five years (since when, in February 1991, a ship loaded with 26.000 Albanians entered the port of Brindisi) we have known that the great migration had began. Two paths were possible at that point.Opening its borders, starting a global distribution of resources, investing its wealth in a long lasting process of reception and integration of young people coming massively from the sea. This was the first path.The second was to reject, to dissuade, to make almost impossible the easy journey from Northern Africa to the coasts of Spain Italy and Greece.Europeans have chosen the second way, and they are daily drowning uncountable children and women and men.Auschwitz on the beach.With the exception of a minority of doctors, voluntary workers, activists and fishers, who now are accused of being the abetters of illegal migrants, the majority of the European population are refusing to deal with their own historical responsibility.Therefore, I declare that I’m not European anymore. And I declare that I have never been European.We have naively expected that an alliance of British murderers, French killers, Italian stranglers, he German slaughterers and Spanish slayers could give birth to a democratic peaceful friendly union. This pretence is over, and I’m sick of it.Five centuries of colonialism, capitalism and nationalism have turned Europeans into the enemy of the human kind. May they be cursed forever! May Europeans be swept away by the storm they have generated, by the weapons they are building, by the fire they have ignited, by the hatred they have cultivated!Because of the aforementioned reasons I must renounce the honour of being part of the Advisory Panel of DIEM25.

Many Marxists seem to have one thing in common: their readers/listeners get the impression that Marxists are in need of psychotherapy. What other conclusion can one derive from Berardi's above musings? 150 years after the first publication of "Das Kapital", a work which Marx originally called "that economic shit" in a letter to his friend and partner Engels, one gets the impression that people like Berardi are intent on making sure that Marx's initial assessment of his work remains valid.

Berardi solemnly declares that "I'm not European anymore. And I declare that I have never been European." Again, a trait which many if not most Marxists share: deplore the way things are but shy away from outlining specifically how "opening its borders, starting a global distribution of resources, investing its wealth in a long lasting process of reception and integration of young people coming massively from the sea" would work.

To simply sing that "all men will become brothers wherever your tender wing remains" just doesn't seem good enough.

18 comments:

I know very well from personal experience that Varoufakis is blinded by the inability of the Left to be a game changer. He is committed to 100% flawed proEU thinking because (a) he does not want to lose the few friends he has left by telling them the truth and (b) that somehow, someway the majority's thinking will change to his cause (eventhough his cause is mortally wounded following the demonstration of the limits of his ability against the Beast of Berlin).

And Berardi is 100% correct: there is no possibility of ever establishing democracy under the brutal regime of the EUSSR. The only way out is to slay the EUSSR beast. And Varoufakis is not a Dragonslayer. At best he is a storyteller and of those we have many in the european continent and enough confusion already about their conflicting stories.

Beradi is an unhappy man, he does not have the political power to change Europe to his Marxist workers paradise, that he would have achieved by his unspecified "changes". By that definition Tsipras is a happy man, not only does he have the power, he also has 100 years of Marxist failure to take lessons from, he is in a perfect position to execute his Marxist changes in Greece in the best possible form. We are in the privileged position to watch these "changes" the next 2 years, the creation of a Marxist state, a historical moment as he calls it.I am not a betting man but let me venture my guess at the "changes".Whatever small attempts there ever was of measuring meritocracy will be abolished. That is social justice to the underprivileged and those with alternative intelligence.Subsidized farming cooperatives will be attempted in a nation whose population is notorious for not being able to cooperate.State (debt) financed transport infrastructure projects will be started. We will see highways to heaven, bridges without end and each village mayor will get his own airport. The Albanian navvies will again pack their shovels and the usual contractors will procure new earth moving equipment (Made in Germany), the village mayor's will again build houses to their numerous relatives.De-privatizations will be carried out with the excuse that privatizations have caused monopolies.Institutions will be politicized because they cannot be above the "will of the people".You may say "but what about the changes comrade"?Lennard

I don't think Tsipras is a Marxist. Tsipras came to power due to the colossal failure of an entitled dual-party system that represents the worst of the political forces in Greece.

And for the record, it's Berlin that installed Tsipras in power because the other clowns were simply insufferable. And the funny thing is that Tsipras will win the next elections too because for as long as the 10YR Greek bond is headed below 5% then Tsipras is unstoppable.

He would not refer to Schiller's wings from Ode an die Freude. He refers to Die Internationale's wings of crows and vultures, and when they have been chased away the sun will shine continuously, if you are a true believer.

Tsipras came to power because the other parties could not satisfy the voters demand for instant gratification, he will lose it when they decide that neither can he. When, and what then will happen, is anybody's guess.Lennard

But for an occupied country it makes no difference what domestic political party is in power. Why would the Greeks change Tsipras for Mitsotakis? Would changing a dress make the prisoner prettier? or expedite the prison term?

Lennard, I have a better idea for our meaningful communications. Let's revert to a binary system of zeros and ones in replying to each other. Who knows? Apple might wish to adopt such brilliant form of human communication and we will both be uber rich ever after.

I went back and re-read Berardi's letter, it is quite exceptional. the style is reminiscent of Evangelos Venizelos on a good day, but the words are out of this world. Between sprinklings of extermination, nationalism, colonialism, capitalism and fascism you find some jewels, "archipelago of infamy, alliance of murderers, killers, stranglers, slaughterers and slayers" and my favorite "salted ware has replaced ZyklonB". You see for your inner eye Goya's Spanish inquisition and an American lay preacher, you smell putrefied corpses and sulphur. The man is mad as a hatter.I have a place of honor on my home office wall, an A2 frame with the most remarkable text I have read that month, it is a start-up conversation piece before the monthly ex-pat lunch. I have just blown up Berardi's letter on the copy machine. PS. Anybody needs an A2 copy of Phoevos recent explanation of the Greek soul?Lennard.

o.k. Lennard, could you please give us a glimpse of the British soul with a slight emphasis on the invasion DNA variance aka the Saxon aka the King Canute (Anglo Scandinavian) variation? I just realized that you are a poet with such deep descriptive language and I need urgently some good material for my A2 copy wall posting.

And oh, Lennard. I just realized that perhaps hanging a picture of Bifo on your wall with an A2 copy of the Social Morphogenesis basics ( I love these Italians trying to steal Greek concepts and building some abstract theory about them so that they might look like a Roman original idea)